A Pakistani child stands next to a replica of the Kaaba, the Grand Mosque in the holy city of Mecca, during celebrations marking Eid Milad-un-Nabi, the birthday of Prophet Mohammed, in Lahore on January 14, 2014. (Arif Ali/AFP/Getty Images)

Editor's note: Saudi Arabia’s religious landscape has sometimes appeared as a monochromatic terrain of pious Muslims following an intolerant, puritanical version of Islam. If that picture was ever accurate, it is certainly not today.

Part Two: After decades of declining popularity under the ascendance of political Islam, Arabism is seeing a revival of sorts among Saudi youth as a way out of the sectarian conflicts now gripping the region.

Bahraini women hold Bahrain and Saudi flags during a pro-government rally in the village of Arad on the Bahraini island of Muharraq on February 21, 2013. (Mohammed Al-Shaikh/AFP/Getty Images)

Editor's note: Saudi Arabia’s religious landscape has sometimes appeared as a monochromatic terrain of pious Muslims following an intolerant, puritanical version of Islam. If that picture was ever accurate, it is certainly not today.

Saudi boys walk past luxury Mercedes cars displayed at the 2013 International Luxury Motor Show in the capital Riyadh on October 29, 2013. (Fayez Nureldine/AFP/Getty Images)

Editor's note: Saudi Arabia’s religious landscape has sometimes appeared as a monochromatic terrain of pious Muslims following an intolerant, puritanical version of Islam. If that picture was ever accurate, it is certainly not today.

Nuns kneel in prayer at the end of Easter Mass service at Cathedral of the Holy Cross, on April 20, 2014 in Boston, Massachusetts. (Andrew Burton/AFP/Getty Images)

Editor’s note: In GlobalPost’s 2013 series “A New Inquisition,” religion writer Jason Berry went deep behind the daily headlines on the Vatican investigation of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the 1500-member council representing the majority of America’s 57,000 nuns.

Pope Francis gives a speech during a meeting with prelates, nuns and seminarists at the Church of All Nations in the Garden of Gethsemane, in east Jerusalem, on May 26, 2014. Pope Francis called for people of all faiths to have access to often hotly-contested sacred sites in Jerusalem, on the final day of his whirlwind Middle East trip. (Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images)

Editor’s note: In GlobalPost’s 2013 series “A New Inquisition,” religion writer Jason Berry went deep behind the daily headlines on the Vatican investigation of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the 1500-member council representing the majority of America’s 57,000 nuns.

An Indian Sikh devotee takes a dip at the Golden Temple in Amritsar on May 23, 2014, on the occasion of the 535th birth anniversary of Guru Amardas, the third master of the Sikhs. It's the same temple that was attacked by Indian troops in 1984. (Narinder Nanu/AFP/Getty Images)

Simran Jeet Singh was born in Texas in the summer of 1984. He doesn’t remember that year, of course, but like many young Sikh Americans, he’s grown up hearing about it: The Indian government feared Sikh secession. At the order of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, military troops marched on Sikhism’s holiest temple. Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards. Anti-Sikh violence erupted throughout India.

Muslim pilgrims pray to God after they threw pebbles at pillars during the 2nd day of "Jamarat" ritual, the stoning of Satan, in Mina near the holy city of Mecca, on October 16, 2013. (FAYEZ NURELDINE/AFP/Getty Images)

NEW YORK — Since Syria’s conflict began in 2011, a stream of jihadists militants has travelled from Saudi Arabia to join rebels fighting the regime of Bashar al Assad. Although travelling fighters are a Saudi tradition going back to the Soviet war in Afghanistan, the Saudi government worries that this time they may return home and take up arms against the monarchy.

So it was perhaps no surprise when the government this year criminalized the act of fighting in foreign conflicts, and named as “terrorist” several groups with which the Saudi jihadists identify: Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood, and various factions of Al Qaeda.

What was surprising was the inclusion of another group on the “terrorist” list: Saudi atheists.

French far-right party National Front (FN) president Marine Le Pen smiles during a press conference at the party's headquarters on May 27, 2014 in Nanterre, outside Paris. France suffered what has been called a "political earthquake" on May 25 as the National Front topped the polls in European elections with an unprecedented haul of one in every four votes cast. (Fred Dufour/AFP/Getty Images)

LONDON — Predictable? Yes. An “earthquake?” Maybe.

The European Parliament election results saw unprecedented success for “anti-” parties of the left and, overwhelmingly, of the right.

Anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim. Anti-immigrant (in some cases, the same thing as being anti-Muslim). Xenophobic.

For weeks, Europe's main parties have been bracing for bad results. They got them. One third of the parliament is now made up of anti-EU parties — enough to make life difficult if not to force the EU into fundamental change.

Palestinian spray graffiti on an Israeli army watchtower which makes up a section of the controversial Israeli separation barrier on May 24, 2014 in the West Bank's Biblical town of Bethlehem, where Pope Francis will celebrate a Sunday Mass. (Musa Al-Shaer/AFP/Getty Images)

When Pope Francis arrived in Bethlehem to preside over a Sunday Mass in Manger Square, he followed in the footsteps of religious pilgrims through the centuries who’ve sought to physically and spiritually connect with the place where tradition holds that Jesus was born and where the Christian faith began.

But the Palestinian Christians who are not tourists or pilgrims but actually live in Bethlehem and Jerusalem as well as villages throughout the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza are a small and steadily diminishing minority.

An Indian school child looks at a display exhibited at a science fair at a government primary school in Hyderabad on March 24, 2014. The science exhibition has been organized for the first time at primary school-level to encourage the development of talent and activities. (NOAH SEELAM/AFP/Getty Images)

NEW DELHI — India’s six-week-long election, in which about 537 million out of 814 million eligible voters went to the polls, is finally over with the election of a new government led by Narendra Modi of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

While the hopes of all voters are for a future of opportunity and progress, the politicians all too often campaigned along retrograde lines, perpetuating divides on the basis of caste, religion, or ethnicity. Overcoming those enduring obstacles to social development is particularly important for the millions of children from poor and marginalized communities—Muslims, tribal groups, and Dalits—who are being denied a basic education.

India produces well-trained professionals who excel in the world economy; so much so that in the United States, there is a growing concern that the US education system is unable to keep up with India and China. Yet, India’s public education system, especially at the elementary levels, is excluding children because of bias.

The major religious traditions of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism help shape the daily lives of the vast majority of the world. As a result, religion permeates politics from all sides in just about every part of the world, fueling compassion as well as intolerance; stirring conflict as well as peace; fighting injustice as well as legitimizing injustice against those who don’t hold the same beliefs.

The GroundTruth Project and GlobalPost ‘Special Reports’ present this blog as a place for accurate, well-informed reporting and analysis of the religious forces that drive and influence global news. As with all foundation support for our journalism, GlobalPost maintains complete editorial independence and accepts no funding which carries any partisan, religious or ideological point of view.